If you are ever
flipping channels and you start watching a film that has already started, it
shouldn’t take you too long to realize you are watching a Wes Anderson film. Rushmore (1998), his second feature film,
has him finding his groove. It is filled with his signature symmetrical
compositions, flat space camera moves, quirky and dry humour, and beautiful art
direction. It is also Anderson’s first collaboration with the great Bill
Murray, with whom he would work again on every one of his movies. Could there be
an alternate universe in which these two have worked on Ghostbusters 3?
The first Wes
Anderson movie I ever saw was his third, The
Royal Tenenbaums, which can be a bit jarring if you are not used to his
style. Everyone can agree he has topped himself with 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel by not only
delivering a beautiful and funny film, but showing us there is a great comedian
within the master of villains that is Ralph Fiennes. Since Rushmore is set in a school there is probably no better place to
watch it than with fellow students at a school campus, which is what I did by
the time I got to it around 2009 while at the University of Sherbrooke with
members of the film club. Given the many extracurricular activities Max Fisher,
the film’s protagonist, organizes I imagine he would have been proud of us.
Fisher (Jason
Schwartzman, another frequent Anderson collaborator) is a student of the
prestigious Rushmore Academy in Houston. Judging by the way he presents himself
you would think he is one of the top students there. He is well spoken, ambitious,
confident, and very organized since he is in charge of many after-school clubs,
from the debate team to the Rushmore beekeepers. The problem is he spends so
much time on those various clubs he ends up spending very little time doing
actual schoolwork, making him one of the worst students in the school and a
major thorn in the backside of school headmaster Dr. Guggenheim (Brian Cox).
Max’s personality
attracts the attention of Herman Blume, an industrialist who has two boys at
the academy, but since they are both spoiled brats he finds an unlikely friend
in the young Max. Given the way Max constantly tries to behave like an adult it
is not surprising he would strike a friendship with a person old enough to be
his dad. The next logical step is of course for Max to fall in love with an
older woman, even worse a teacher at the school.
The teacher in
question, Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), tolerates Max’s affections for a
while, but lets him know things could never work out between them. Things could
however work out between Rosemary and Herman, even if Herman is married, which
is when the film takes a turn into somewhat slapstick territory. Upon finding
out his friend is dating the woman he loves, Max declares war by putting bees
in his office, and Herman retaliates by running over Max’s bike. The adult man
and the schoolboy go from having an adult friendship to fighting like a couple
of teenagers.
Rushmore takes you by surprise because you never know what to
expect. Max acts like the smartest and most mature kid in school, but of course
he comes to realize he just a kid after all. You do not expect a restrained
performance from Bill Murray, especially not in the 1990s when his biggest
movies were Groundhog Day, Kingpin, and Space Jam. Yet here he plays a cynical man going through a mid-life
crisis who chugs a glass of whisky before jumping into a dirty pool while
wearing Budweiser swimming trunks and smoking a cigarette.
For Murray Rushmore was the indication he had a
bright future in independent films delivering nuanced performances as flawed
human beings. For Anderson it was the beginning of many great collaborations
and a big step forward in him defining his signature style as one of the best filmmakers
working today.
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